Etsy SEO Tips Part 2 – Where to put SEO Keywords in your Etsy Shop

Etsy SEO Tips Part 2 – Where to put SEO Keywords in your Etsy Shop

Now that you have created your SEO Keyword List in Part 1, it’s time to start placing SEO keywords into your Etsy shop. Etsy Search and Google Search differ slightly in which parts of a shop/page/listing they look at to get their results. To truly give your shop the best possible chance of being found, you need to know about both.

When considering the SEO of your main shop page, this is mostly for the benefit of Google and other search engines external to Etsy. On your main page there are 2 key areas to look at first: Your Shop Title and Shop Announcement. To edit these, log on to Etsy then hover “your shop” in the top right corner and select “Info & Appearance”.

Your shop title is the text in grey directly under your shop name. Your shop announcement is the black text underneath it. Google pulls the text from both of these places for its search results so we need to pack them with your very best most relevant keywords. However, do make sure it reads like a proper sentence. “ornaments mouse mice handmade gifts etsy felt” is not easily readable to a potential customer, and Google takes notice of the links that don’t get clicks. So pack in the keywords, but form it into a sentence. “handmade felt mice, mouse ornament gifts on Etsy” says clearly what I sell, while using many of my biggest SEO keywords. Customers are more likely to click, which will improve your ranking with Google. Your shop title can be up to 56 characters long, and the first 220 or so characters of your shop announcement will also be pulled by Google. Use up as many as you can.

Here’s how it looks in my shop:

And here is what Google uses for its search results.

My full shop announcement still includes the other things that are important about my shop, but those first 220 or so characters are packed with my SEO keywords for maximum effect on Google:

Last up for Google only search results is your shop sections. Google will give searchers results from shop sections too, so make sure you name your sections something that is easy to understand, very searchable terms. It looks very arty for a jewelry store to name their shop sections “for your neck”, “for your finger” & “for your ears” but it’s not helpful to their customers. Name your sections with clear terms your customers would use.

Now on to the areas that both Etsy search and Google use to pull results. These are the keywords within your individual listings. Google is interested in the entire listing title AND the first 200 or so characters of the listing description. When I ran a Google search for one of my listings I noticed it listed the same listing twice, once pulling the title text only and directly underneath it pulling the description text only.

How it looks in my shop:

Etsy Search is also interested in your entire listing titles, but with more emphasis put on thefirst 3 words of your listing title. I used to put the name of my mice in first. For example “Dale the Dalek Mouse Doctor Who inspired mouse ornament” but this was not getting me the best results. As “Doctor Who” and “Dalek” were much more popular search terms than “Dale the Dalek” once I changed the title to “Doctor Who Dalek Mouse…” the number of times I was found in search for “Doctor Who” or “Dalek” went up dramatically, along with his sales. I now often put the name of the mouse in last in my listing titles, and sometimes I don’t put it in the title at all and leave it for the description.

If you have many items that are similar (for example jewelry) then try experimenting with which keywords you use in the beginning of your titles. You can check your shop stats to see which ones are working well on Etsy search and Google Analytics for what is working well on Google Search.

Etsy Search is also interested in your item tags and materials, to a lesser degree than your titles. So make sure you fill these out with more relevant keywords from your SEO Keyword list.

There is some argument as to whether doubling up your tag keywords is worth doing. I do it with my most important keywords, “felt mouse ornament” appears everywhere, my listing titles, descriptions and tags. I tag “mouse ornament” “felt mouse” and “felt mice” in most of my listings and I might double up on a few others too. Don’t overdo it though, if you have other great relevant keywords then use them. Remember to tag with words that are specific to that particular listing, for example colours are good if you would like to be featured in Etsy treasuries. You can always edit your tags once you see which ones are working in Etsy stats. Please do make sure whatever tags you use are relevant, Etsy will penalise sellers that tag with misleading words, and more importantly you aren’t helping your customers by being deceptive. Make sure it doesexactly what it says on the tin and everyone will be happy!

Everyone deserves to have more in their life to smile about. My mice are experts at creating smiles.

I am Anna, the artist behind these joyful artisan felt mice. My Granny was a mouse maker, and just like her I am on a mission to let more joy into your life. I want my creations to speak to your soul, light you up and inspire you with pure delight.

Because I believe that the things that make you happy are what make your life so unique.

If you would like to learn more about me, please click "My Story" link at the top of the page.

Hi Adrian, Thanks for your message. I’m sorry you’re finding the process frustrating. Yes I do offer a consultation service for Etsy sellers. If you are interested in my pricing please send me an email to info@thehouseofmouse.co.uk and we can talk about your needs. Anna, The House of Mouse.

Hi MJ, Oh yes I know what you mean. Missing punctuation and weird grammar really drive me nuts too! The reason I don’t use them is Google and Etsy search don’t recognize punctuation or grammar, they are just looking for key words. You waste precious space with unnecessary full stops, commas and “filler words” like “and, with, or, etc”. Thank you for making such a valid point, I will update the article to include this information as I think it would be helpful for other sellers too. Please let me know if you have any more questions, I’m happy to help.

[…] The Small Print. It would take me a really long time to do a write up on all of these aspects (and I do plan on doing them someday!) but for now, I will leave some links to where I found out how to write up the small print! I have written a post about what to include in a listing description HERE. I learned how to write policies (through experience too!) HERE and shop announcements and titles HERE. […]